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Text Styles documentation

Text Styles is a handmade animated text plugin for DaVinci Resolve.

Product pageUpdated 28 June 2026

How it works

Text Styles works from a 6 by 6 grid of letters, animated or still. The plugin splits that grid into the individual characters you typed and then animates them however you have set it up. That is the whole idea: the grid is the artwork, and the plugin handles the typing and the animation.

Because a style is just a grid, you are not limited to the nine that ship with it. The built in tools let you edit a style, pull letters out of an existing one, or assemble a completely new one. To build your own, download the template from the Text Styles product page first, since it defines the grid the plugin expects.

To make a style by hand: print the grid, draw your letters over it, scan it back in and clean it up. Then fix the shape with DaVinci Resolve's Grid Warp node. Switch it to show Source, set the X and Y Grid size to 1, and set the magnet type to Selected, then position the little box over your printed lines. Switch to Destination to remap it. If the print came out warped, use six points and place each one where the printed lines meet, which rebuilds the grid digitally and remaps it back to a perfect square.

Then run it through the Text Styles Grid Tools node to hide the printed guide lines, center each letter, and make the small per letter adjustments that make a style sit correctly.

To make a digital style you can follow the same route, but it is easier to gather your letters and feed them into the Text Styles Grid Builder node. Connect each letter to its named input, the A artwork into input A, B into B, and so on. Hold Alt while connecting to the node itself rather than to one of its outputs, and it reveals every input so you can pick which one is A, which is B, which are the numbers, and so on.

Key facts

DaVinci Resolve
DaVinci Resolve 19.1 to 21.1. Works on free and Studio.
Pricing
There is a free version and a paid version, both licensed for personal, client, and commercial use. The free version includes the magazine cutouts style with 4 variations, advanced text controls, stop motion timing, and shake. Stop motion timing makes letters animate at a lower effective frame rate to mimic traditional hand drawn animation, with controls for input speed, displayed frames, and per letter timing offsets so duplicate letters pull from different textures. Shake moves each letter independently using separate sliders for position, rotation, size, intensity, and speed. The paid version (Text Styles Pro) is a one time purchase of $22.90 with lifetime updates and a 30-day refund policy, no subscription. It unlocks all 9 styles, all 1,840 magazine cutout variations, the Edit page, the full In and Out animation engine, the spline editor, coloring and recolor modes, motion blur, and the grid tools to build your own styles. The animation engine lets you control stagger in frames, stagger direction (forward, backward, or random), easing via the built in spline editor, and many other per letter parameters without placing a single keyframe manually. Because the start and end state of every In and Out animation is fully customizable, the engine spans everything from high end kinetic titles to rough, bold collage style motion, letting you build over a million distinct In and Out animation and layout variations. You cannot resell or redistribute the assets themselves.
How you get it
Text Styles is sold through Gumroad, not the sh4rkk.com checkout, so it does not appear in your sh4rkk.com library. Buy the Pro version or get the free version on its Gumroad page, sh4rk1.gumroad.com/l/text-styles. Gumroad gives you the download right after checkout and emails you a link, so you can download it again from that email or from your Gumroad library.
Updates
Updates are free. To update, simply download the latest version again and reinstall it.
License
There is no license key and no online activation. The product is just files you install, so there is no machine limit and nothing that can deactivate.
Performance
Normal text and animations play in real time, including the animation engine, and it is heavily GPU optimized. It gets heavy once you stack every effect at once: the per letter drop shadow spawns a separate shadow for every character and motion blur samples are the two main costs, so playback can drop on a busy shot. Final renders are always full quality. If you drop frames, set Fusion Memory Cache to On.
Support
Support runs on the Paradise Community Discord, or by email at support@sh4rkk.com. Replies land within 1 to 28 hours, and Discord is near instant when sh4rk is online.

Installation

Preparation

  1. 1Download and extract the Text Styles package.
  2. 2Open DaVinci Resolve.
  3. 3Create a new timeline and navigate to the Fusion page with an active composition.

Automatic install

  1. 1Drag the installer.lua file from the package into the Fusion nodes area and click OK.
  2. 2Restart DaVinci Resolve.
  3. 3Verify on the Fusion page: press Shift + Space and search for Text Styles.
  4. 4Verify on the Edit page: look under Titles or Generators for Text Styles.

Manual install

  1. 1Open the Content folder in the extracted package.
  2. 2Copy all .fuse files into your Resolve Fuses folder.
  3. 3Copy all .setting and .png files into your Resolve Macros folder.
  4. 4Double click the .drfx file to install the Edit page templates.
  5. 5Restart DaVinci Resolve if it was open.
  6. 6Verify on the Fusion page: press Shift + Space and search for Text Styles.
  7. 7Verify on the Edit page: look under Titles or Generators for Text Styles.

Notes

Styles

Text Styles ships with 9 handmade styles: magazine cutouts, marker, pen, scribbly, highlighter, paint, sketch, paralax, and paralax outline. Between them there are over 1,868 variations. Every style was drawn, painted, or cut by hand with real tools and captured on professional scanners, so the grain and the detail hold up when you zoom in. Magazine cutouts is the style the plugin was really built around, and it carries 1,840 of those variations on its own: every character is a different piece of paper, taken from a different real magazine cover, which holds up static or animated. Uppercase and lowercase letters share the same textures. Repeat a letter in a word and each one picks a different texture automatically, as long as the style has more than one variation, which most do. Letters A to Z and numbers 0 to 9 only. No special characters. Under the hood a style is a 6x6 transparent sprite sheet with one letter variation per cell, which is what makes per letter animation possible and lets you mix multiple styles in a single composition. The included Grid Breaker and Grid Builder tools pull letters out of any existing style sheet, or build and sell your own styles from any image set, so the 9 included styles are a starting point rather than a limit.

Why it stands out

Most paper and magazine cutout text plugins ship a single look, are paid only, expose a handful of controls, and use computer generated graphics. Text Styles ships nine distinct handmade styles, has a free tier licensed for commercial use so there is zero financial or legal risk to trying it, costs less than typical alternatives, and is built entirely from real physical media rather than shaders. Output is always transparent and composites directly over footage with no extra steps. You can stack multiple nodes or generators in one composition to combine styles, and the Grid tools let you build and sell your own. The animation engine covers per letter stagger, forward, backward, and random direction, easing via the spline editor, and dozens of parameters with no manual keyframes. Its fully customizable start and end state means one plugin spans high end kinetic titles through rough, bold collage style motion, with over a million possible In and Out animation and layout variations. Per letter transformation controls add position, size, rotation, and aspect ratio. The free tier includes the magazine cutouts style with 4 variations, licensed for commercial use, so you can try it without commitment, while the Pro version unlocks all 9 styles, all 1,840 magazine cutout variations, the Edit page, the full animation engine, coloring modes, motion blur, and the grid tools. The main limitation is character support: only A to Z and 0 to 9 are available, with no special characters.

Frequently asked questions

Yes. Text Styles runs on both the free version and Studio. The free edition lives on the Fusion page; the paid edition also adds the Edit page. You do not need DaVinci Resolve Studio.

Connect the style sheet by hand. It takes a minute:

  1. On the Fusion page, press Shift + Space and search for Text Styles.
  2. Add the node.
  3. Open the Styles folder and choose either the mp4 or the image sequence. The mp4 is easier.
  4. Drag that file into your media pool.
  5. Drag it from the media pool into Fusion so it becomes a node.
  6. Connect it to the Text Styles node.
  7. Connect Text Styles to MediaOut.

That should do it. Also make sure the mp4 has Loop turned on.

Full installationsteps are in the How To Install section above.

The free edition includes the magazine cutouts style with 4 variations, advanced text controls, stop motion timing, and shake. The paid edition unlocks all 9 styles, all 1,840 cutout variations, the Edit page, the full In and Out animation engine, the spline editor, coloring and recolor modes, motion blur, and the grid tools to build your own styles.

Yes, both the free and paid versions are licensed for personal, client, and commercial use. The only thing you cannot do is resell or redistribute the assets themselves.

No, sadly it only supports letters (A to Z) and numbers (0 to 9).

No. Both use the same textures, so visually they are identical. The plugin does not distinguish between cases.

Yes. Output is always on a transparent background so you just drop it over your footage and it composites cleanly with no extra steps.

Yes. Each Text Styles node on the Fusion page (or generator on the Edit page) runs one style at a time, but you can stack as many nodes or generators as you want in the same composition and mix styles freely.

Yes. The included grid tools, grid breaker and grid builder tools let you extract, edit, and build your own style sheets from any images, so you are not limited to the 9 styles that ship with it.

Yes and no. The plugin can give each duplicate letter a different texture, so when you type a word like "hello" the second "l" comes out with a different texture than the first. Your selected style just needs more than 1 variation, and most of the included styles do, so it is rarely a problem.

It makes the letters animate at a lower effective frame rate to mimic the look of traditional hand drawn animation. You can control the input speed, which frames are actually shown, and set different timing offsets per duplicate letter so each one pulls from a different texture. It is what makes the text feel genuinely handmade instead of just a filtered render.

It shakes each letter individually rather than the whole text block, so it feels organic. You get separate sliders for position, rotation, size, intensity, and speed, which means you can dial it anywhere from a subtle jitter to full chaos.

No, you can write as much as you want. We do suggest keeping it under about two sentences for performance reasons, especially if you stack on some of the heavier effects, lol.

It is usually the drop shadow or the motion blur. The drop shadow is very fast by default, but we also let you apply it per letter for real depth, which spawns a separate drop shadow for every single letter, so a lot of them can lag or even crash on a weaker machine. Motion blur is just heavy for computers in general, so do not crank the samples to infinite.

You can. Click the value and type any number you want, even outside the slider "limits", so you could position your text 99,999,999,999 pixels away if you really wanted to. But please, do not actually do that, lol.

No. You set a start and an end, and the animation engine builds everything in between. There is a built in spline editor if you want to fine tune the easing, but you never have to place keyframes by hand.

It runs in real time, but it depends on your settings. Normal text and animations stay real time, even with the animation engine running. Once you stack every effect plus motion blur it gets heavy fast, so playback can drop on a busy shot. Either way, final renders are always full quality. Dropping frames? Set Fusion Memory Cache to 'On'.

DaVinci Resolve 19.1 or later, on every operating system Resolve runs on (Windows, macOS, Linux), at any aspect ratio.

One time purchase, no subscription. You are not buying ownership of the product itself, you get a license to use the assets in your own projects, including client and commercial work. You cannot resell or redistribute the assets on their own. Pay once and get lifetime updates.

Please read our refund policy. If you hit a technical issue we cannot resolve, reach out on our Discord and I will help.